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Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Those of you with toddlers will get the reference.
Yonhap summarizes a report from the Korean Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA) which puts North Korean military spending at $8.77 billion in purchasing-parity adjusted terms or 15 times the $570 million announced by the North Korean government. The estimate would imply that military expenditures were 35 percent of national income. Indeed, military expenditures were so exactly 35 percent of GDP that one wonders if the fraction (.35) determined the expenditure level estimate ($8.77 billion). Nevertheless, the estimate falls into the range compiled from other sources by GlobalSecurity.org.
Figuring out how much of the North Korean economy is accounted for by the military is complicated by a host of factors. First, it is a conscript army, and one can, in the extreme pay the conscripts nothing. (This was the solution of Tsar Nicholas I to the Jewish Question.) The direct budgetary costs would be zero, but would the true economic costs (the opportunity costs) be zero? Of course not. In most volunteer armies wages are the biggest part of the expenditure – which is why Japan, for example, has a huge military budget in global terms, but no one would confuse the JSDF with a powerful military machine.
A second complication is that the North Korean military performs functions such as construction for example that are normally carried out by non-military entities in most countries. So, perhaps half of its manpower is allocated to non combat-oriented activities, narrowly defined.
The military also has its own economic assets, and assessing the role of this parallel economy is yet another complication. This potentially is of significant policy importance: to the extent that the proceeds from arms sales are going directly to the military, the military may have a purely pecuniary incentive to continue selling arms, even if other parts of the government would like to restrict sales for broader foreign policy reasons.
So, how big is the North Korean military? The best answer is probably found in physical indicators, not budgetary figures.
